“Make a request to the Astral Tablets for the existence of the original.”
I concentrated, sent a mental request, and a transparent old paper with intricate female handwriting appeared in front of my eyes.
“Check the date,” the Guardian suggested. “Find the differences between the original and the copy. And note that a few words conveyed not in tracing paper but true in meaning, is not a bad result!”
Return to Athos
Greece
“Finally! I’m here! God, what a joy it is to come back here again and again!”
I was waiting for my luggage at Thessaloniki airport with the anticipation of a cup of coffee on the balcony overlooking the sea in my cozy hole in Ouranoupoli. In August, I used to rent an apartment on the top floor in Nicolette’s house, a 5—7 minutes walk to the ferry to Mount Athos.
Athos in Greece was not only a state within the state, an Orthodox monastic republic on the Holy Mountain, where women were not allowed. Athos was a peninsula that almost entirely had belonged to Orthodox Athos before the war with Turkey. Later, in order to settle the Greek refugees, part of the monastic territory was given to secular Greece with a shift in borders to Ouranoupoli, the city of Heaven (or Uranus, the planet in charge of Heaven), then a small village accessible for everyone. There was an early morning ferry to Dafni (the port of Mount Athos) there, and at 10 a tour ship to the Holy Mountain so that tourists could admire the monasteries from afar and venerate the shrines brought to them in boats by Athos monks. At the foot of the Mountain the spirit was breathtaking! – a huge pillar of Light went up to the Sky.
Oh, if I had been a man, I would have climbed the Mountain, lived in monasteries and … would I have returned? Happiness was to die in the Holy Land!
However, even in Ouranoupoli, you could feel the Gates open, and you were instantly heard in Heaven, every word and thought.
I loved Ouranoupoli. I loved everything there: the people, the sea, the food, the atmosphere of peace of mind and the Spirit of the Holy Mountain. Athos was my love at first sight, and my heart would forever remain there.
The luggage began to crawl onto the belt. Shifting my gaze from one suitcase to another, I noticed an Old Monk. I had met him before, but where and when? However, monks were everywhere on Athos, especially in August, the peak of pilgrimage, when many Orthodox holidays were celebrated, including the day of St. Panteleimon, after whom the Russian monastery on Athos was named, and the Assumption of the Virgin. I liked listening to stories about Athos, when monks, stopping for the night in Ouranoupoli, had dinner in cafes and shared their impressions.
I walked out of the airport building. Outside, as usual, I was met by Kostas, a friend of my friend Dimitra. He grabbed my things, and we were already rushing along the serpentine roads towards home. In an hour or an hour and a half, I would throw myself into Nicolette’s arms, grab the keys of my hole, drink a cup of coffee and run to the sea – the most beautiful, azure, paradise sea with a view of the fabulous island of Ammouliani, the Holy Mountain and the mysterious Tower; sea with fish and a white sandy beach, with few people and a shade from the olive trees. By lunchtime, I used to return home and work on my manuscripts until 18:00. That time I had with me some miraculously surviving stories from the book “Do You Believe in Ghosts?”
At 18:00 the heat usually began to die down, and I went for a promenade to watch the sunset on the border with Mount Athos at the dilapidated Zygou monastery, where one could swim in a bay hidden from prying eyes, and then to return to the Tower, the symbol of Ouranoupoli (a former hotel for monks, and later – museum), drink coffee with friends, exchanging stories, including those about Saints and icons. I loved Athos icons, I liked to look at them for a long time – to feel them, there were many alive and unique ones there! At midnight, I used to return home.
Ouranoupoli, Athos, Greece
“Welcome back!” exclaimed Nicolette. “Alice’s flat is waiting for its mistress! Coffee?”
I opened the door to the balcony and smiled, “Hello, City of Heaven! Hello, the Sun and the Sea! Hello, Athos and the Holy Mountain!”
Suddenly the phone rang, but the number wasn’t identified.
“Hello, Alice,” a familiar male voice said. “Welcome back!”
“Ray?!” I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“On Athos… Listen…”
“Athos?” he seemed surprised.
“I’m always on Athos in August… Ray, listen…”
“In August?!” he was even more surprised.
“Yes, listen to me! How can you call me? You are a ghost!”
“A ghost, so what? You have communicated with ghosts, haven’t you?”
“As with you now, not yet!”
“So it’s time to start it that way as well!”
“What do you want to tell me?” I asked, almost relaxed and resigned to the opportunity to communicate on the phone with ghosts calling live to Athos from unidentified numbers.
“Well, nothing special… Okay, I get it. See you.”
“Where? Here, on Athos?” I got surprised.
“Who will let me, a magician, go to Athos? In a dream!” Ray laughed, and the connection was cut off.
***
There were only two crowded streets in Ouranoupoli – the sea one, with cafes and shops, and the central or main one, two houses from the sea one, mostly with icon shops. The streets met at the Tower.
Dimitra’s icon shop was located on the main street directly opposite the Tower, and St. Marina, wielding an ax at the devil, the icon, purchased from Dimitra, was my first Athos icon. Dimitra and her family were Greek. We communicated in English.
“Hello, Alice! I hope Kostas rushed you here at lightning speed! How is the sea?”
“I’m in Paradise, thank you!” I smiled and glanced at the wall with hand-painted icons.
“You have Marina already, and the Holy Family, too,” Dimitra remembered all the icons that I had already got. “By the way, how is Marina doing? Has she already chopped up the devil with the axe?”
“Still in process,” I sighed. “I need the icon of St. Peter.”
“I’ve got Peter and Paul!”
“I have Peter and Paul. By the way, I go to the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the Metochion of the Optina Pustyn Monastery. Do you know what they symbolize?”
“I’m not so pious, that’s why I’m asking you about icons, taking advantage of the fact that you like coffee,” Dimitra smiled.
“Peter and Paul are a symbol of the duality of the world, black and white, merged into one, left and right paths. Peter was considered the main Apostle in Catholicism, while Paul – in Orthodoxy. The Athos image presents them embracing in the shape of a heart.”
“White and Black Magic?”
“You can say that also, but I need Peter with the keys,” I clarified, continuing to inspect the hand-painted icons, but many of them I had already seen there a year before.
“With the keys to Paradise?” Dimitra asked.
“He